"[A] man . . .the other day pointed out that I was never bored. I hadn’t thought of that before, but it’s true: I’m never bored. I’m appalled, horrified, angered, but never bored. The world appears to me so infinite in its variety that many lifetimes could not exhaust its interest. So long as you can still be surprised, you have something to be thankful for."
-Theodore Dalrymple

Monday, September 28, 2009

More Boats

Today is the official feast of St Sinach MacDara and aren't we awash in boats again. Mrs D'Arcy describes today's saint this way:

Down the centuries, until outboard motors, fishermen dipped sails three times in salute to MacDara's island off the Connemara coast. Now they sign themselves with the Cross. September 28 is given as the main feast day of the saint, but July 16 is the special day of local fishermen whose currachs still carry a small bottle of holy water in the prow. It is a day of reverent pilgrimage with the celebrant of the Mass bringing the Blessed Sacrament to the island in a special currach. Marking MacDara's monastic settlement today are the famous remains of the little almost roofless ancient oratory built of massive stone. A wooden statue of the saint was preserved there for many centuries.

Fifth-century MacDara's name Sinach is met with again in 12th century Irish religious history. Ceallach of the Clann Sinach brought his "great name and influence" to the cause of renewal in the Irish church. Long a favorite name locally, MacDara is recently coming into greater use. It is interesting to note that Patrick Pearse, the poet-patriot of modern Ireland, chose MacDara as the name of his hero in The Singer, his classic play of Irish patriotism.

Nor has MacDara's little stone oratory ever lost its appeal. Its gable shape stands as the prototype of features noted in important Irish art treasures such as the gabled top of the Monasterboice Muireadach sculptured Cross and the gable shape of the Moneymusk reliquary (a case for relics of Colmcille, preserved from 1315 in Moneymusk House and now in the Edinburgh Museum.)

MacDara's chapel has recently been restored. There is a photo below. The picture at the top of this post shows it almost roofless in the 19th century

O Holy Ghost the Lord, Who on Pentecost gavest the Church the gift of tongues that Christ might be known,
loved, and served by peoples of divers nations and customs: watch over the Anglican heritage within Thy
Church, we pray Thee, that, led by Thy guidance and strengthened by Thy grace, that Use may find such favour
in Thy sight that its people may increase both in holiness and number, and so show forth Thy glory; Who livest and reignest with the Father and the Son, one God world without end. Amen.

LITURGICAL REGENERATION
One might infer from this selection of links that I believe
"Liturgical Regeneration" is going to come principally, if not
exclusively, from a restoration of the traditional Roman Rite.
Such an inference would be largely correct. However, see also
the Anglican Ordinariate links above.

E-Mail:
High praise, recipes, & sources for
good reeds may be addressed to:

thesixbells AT verizon DOT net

(after, of course, you close up the
spaces, change the "AT" to an "@" and
the "DOT" to a "." Spambots delendi sunt.)
(If this looks new to you, you are quite right; the
old Tavernkeeper address is no more.)

An address for complaints may possibly
be added at some point. In the fullness of time.
Le cunamh Dé. Deo volente.

Should you, in fact, decide to drop me a note,
it is entirely possible that I may decide to publish
it unless you tell me not to. And even if you tell
me not to, things do get in something of a muddle here;
in a fit of absentmindedness, I might publish it anyway.
So discretion is always advisable.

"Two of the pubs near Oxford which C.S. Lewis frequented were The Trout and The Six Bells.
Some of Lewis's American readers had written him to inquire about his views on drinking
alcoholic beverages. His response to them was in no uncertain terms: 'I have always
in my books been concerned simply to put forward mere Christianity, and am no
guide on these (most regrettable) interdenominational questions. I do however
most strongly object to the tyrannic and unscriptural insolence of anything that calls
itself a Church and makes teetotalism a condition of membership. Apart from the more
serious objection (that Our Lord Himself turned water into wine and made wine the medium
of the only rite He imposed on all His followers), it is so provincial (what I believe
you people call small town). Don't they realize that Christianity arose in the
Mediterranean world where, then as now, wine was as much a part of the normal diet as bread?" C. S. Lewis: Images of His World by Douglas Gilbert & Clyde S. Kilby